# Daily Notes & Dashboard
The Daily Note is your day-to-day home base: a dated note that auto-files itself and shows a live task dashboard pulled from every Task note in the vault.
## What the Daily Note template does
When you run **Templater: Create new note from template → Daily Note**, the opening `<%* %>` block:
1. Computes today's date, year, and month name.
2. Ensures the folder `Daily Notes/<Year>/<Month>/` exists (creating each level if needed).
3. Moves the note to `Daily Notes/<Year>/<Month>/YYYY-MM-DD.md`.
So daily notes organize themselves into a tidy year/month tree without you making folders. The relevant code:
````md
<%*
const today = tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD");
const year = tp.date.now("YYYY");
const month = tp.date.now("MMMM");
const folderPath = `Daily Notes/${year}/${month}`;
const segments = folderPath.split("/");
let cur = "";
for (const seg of segments) {
cur = cur ? `${cur}/${seg}` : seg;
if (!app.vault.getAbstractFileByPath(cur)) {
await app.vault.createFolder(cur);
}
}
const expected = `${folderPath}/${today}.md`;
if (tp.file.path(true) !== expected) {
await tp.file.move(`${folderPath}/${today}`);
}
_%>
# <% tp.date.now("dddd, MMMM D, YYYY") %>
````
> [!tip] Open today's note automatically
> Obsidian's built-in **Daily notes** core plugin (or the community **Calendar** plugin) can open today's note on launch. Point its template setting at this Daily Note template, or just keep the Templater command on a hotkey.
## The task dashboard
Below the heading, a single `dataviewjs` block reads every note in `Activities/Tasks` and sorts open tasks into time buckets, plus recently closed ones:
- **Overdue** — open, due before today.
- **Due today** — open, due today.
- **Due this week** — open, due between tomorrow and the upcoming Sunday.
- **Future** — open, due after this week.
- **Recently closed** — done within the last 7 days.
Each open task gets a checkbox that marks it done (stamping `closed:`); each closed task gets a pre-ticked box that reopens it. A "Links" column shows the people/projects/classes/assignments the task connects to, so you can see context at a glance. This is the same toggle mechanism used on dimension pages, described in [[06 Dataview Queries|Dataview Queries]].
Because it reads the whole `Activities/Tasks` folder, the dashboard is identical on every day's note — it's a *current* view, not a snapshot. Use the body of the daily note for the day's free-form notes; use the dashboard to drive your to-dos.
## A standalone Dashboard note (optional)
You don't have to use daily notes to get the dashboard. You can drop the same `dataviewjs` block into a permanent `Dashboard.md` at the vault root and pin it as your home tab. Many people keep both: a daily note for journaling, and a Dashboard for an always-on task overview. You can also add other queries to a Dashboard — e.g. recent activity across all types, or active projects:
````md
```dataview
LIST FROM "Projects" WHERE status = "active" SORT file.name ASC
```
````
The full Daily Note dashboard code is on the [[Daily Note Template]] page.
Next: the optional integrations — [[08 Mail Integration|Apple Mail]] and [[09 Todoist Integration|Todoist]].